Brand-enchanted meaningful work : Employees’ constructions of their work as meaningful in luxury-brand organisations

In this thesis, I explore how brands influence employees’ constructions of their work as meaningful, and what this says about how they construct their work as meaningful. I take my cue from the literature about meaningful work, which has shown how various sources of meaningfulness interact, from the characteristics of the job and the self to interpersonal and material relations, and all their related mechanisms.

I have thus conducted interpretative qualitative research about the luxury-brand sector, using 39 in-depth interviews with employees of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy). Inspired by narrative research, I have taken a life-story approach in the interviewing process to understand my respondents’ experiences of work in the broader context of their life trajectories. I also distinguish between three types of storytelling: organisational narratives; employees’ stories; and my interpretative account. In the interpretative process, I draw on my own experience as a former LVMH employee to provide context and a deeper understanding of employees’ stories.

Through multiple close readings of my transcripts, I identify recurring patterns and contradictions, resolved into five distinct categories of stories that employees tell to imbue their work with positive meanings and ultimately to construct it as meaningful. Drawing on these categories of stories, I develop two new concepts: brand enchantment and brand-enchanted meaningful work. I define brand enchantment as a process by which employees connect emotionally with the brand by embracing and sustaining its symbolic meanings and the emotions they evoke. I define brand-enchanted meaningful work as the experience of work as meaningful based on the brand’s symbolic meanings and the emotions they evoke. I have also developed a model that shows their relationships, the role of the brand in constructing meaningfulness, and its related mechanisms by which work becomes meaningful.

These two concepts and model add to the current understanding of meaningful work by identifying the brand as a source of meaningfulness. They also deepen our understanding of the agentic and structural mechanisms involved in the construction of meaningful work, as well as the emotional mechanisms.